Algebra 1 Exploration and Application Through Hands-on Activities and Projects
One of the main struggles of any math teacher is making math fun for students who are equal parts terrified of and bored by it. As a teacher of Algebra, it becomes very easy to fall into the routine of modeling the steps for doing something and then having students practice those steps on a worksheet. Who wants a life that is made up of an avalanche of worksheets?! I've found that my life is always much, much easier if I have some sort of hands-on activity or project that students are able to work on because it allows them to take ownership of their learning, to share ideas in order to come up with a collective solution and, furthermore, it allows you as the teacher to play facilitator rather than instructor. Extra points if you can create an activity has some sort of real-world application because it will be much more memorable, allowing students to see connections between math and their own lives! With project-based or activity-driven learning, students are able to "discover" the objective you want to teach them rather than you having to tell them which, I guarantee, will help students retain the lesson much longer. Our lives are busy, though, and it's hard to invent activities and projects all the time! My goal with this wiki page is to put up whole lessons or excellent activities that can be used or modified for the objectives you are teaching in your classroom because, let's be honest, it's no fun re-inventing the wheel every day.
Example Objective with Activities
Objective: Scholars will be able to plot and identify ordered pairs by using the coordinate plane.
Use these guided notes to help students through each of the first few activities for this lesson: What is the coordinate plane.docx
1. Do-Now: Have students draw number lines (or display this one on the white board) and identify important aspects of those number lines such as the fact that arrows are drawn at the ends to indicate that the number lines continue, that positive numbers are written on the right and negative numbers written on the left, etc.
2. Introductory Activity: Afterwards, using an LCD projector onto a whiteboard, display a coordinate plane and have students come up and label some of the same things, finding similarities between the axes of a coordinate plane and number lines.
3. Introductory Video: After these introductory activities, show the students the following video, to help further their knowledge of the vocabulary associated with the coordinate plane in order to get them ready for actually plotting points.
4. Lesson Activity: Introduction to ordered pairs and plotting points on the coordinate plane. Model how to plot points on the coordinate plane using the LCD projector or show the tail-end of this video.
5. Practice Activity: There are a variety of games that can be used to practice the vocabulary and concepts from today's lesson, which I can continue to add onto this site. However, one of my favorites is cartesian plane battleship. I played this game with my students this year. I had students pair off and use cartesian planes like a battleship board, with students choosing all of the ordered pairs for their ships and then guessing the locations of their opponent's ships. For some students who were comfortable with the Cartesian plane, this worked beautifully. However, for others, this was challenging to work on. One teacher seems to have found a solution by playing a teacher vs. class game. His directions and explanations can be found here.
Algebra 1 Exploration and Application Through Hands-on Activities and Projects
One of the main struggles of any math teacher is making math fun for students who are equal parts terrified of and bored by it. As a teacher of Algebra, it becomes very easy to fall into the routine of modeling the steps for doing something and then having students practice those steps on a worksheet. Who wants a life that is made up of an avalanche of worksheets?! I've found that my life is always much, much easier if I have some sort of hands-on activity or project that students are able to work on because it allows them to take ownership of their learning, to share ideas in order to come up with a collective solution and, furthermore, it allows you as the teacher to play facilitator rather than instructor. Extra points if you can create an activity has some sort of real-world application because it will be much more memorable, allowing students to see connections between math and their own lives! With project-based or activity-driven learning, students are able to "discover" the objective you want to teach them rather than you having to tell them which, I guarantee, will help students retain the lesson much longer. Our lives are busy, though, and it's hard to invent activities and projects all the time! My goal with this wiki page is to put up whole lessons or excellent activities that can be used or modified for the objectives you are teaching in your classroom because, let's be honest, it's no fun re-inventing the wheel every day.
Example Objective with Activities
Objective: Scholars will be able to plot and identify ordered pairs by using the coordinate plane.
Use these guided notes to help students through each of the first few activities for this lesson: What is the coordinate plane.docx
1. Do-Now: Have students draw number lines (or display this one on the white board) and identify important aspects of those number lines such as the fact that arrows are drawn at the ends to indicate that the number lines continue, that positive numbers are written on the right and negative numbers written on the left, etc.
2. Introductory Activity: Afterwards, using an LCD projector onto a whiteboard, display a coordinate plane and have students come up and label some of the same things, finding similarities between the axes of a coordinate plane and number lines.
3. Introductory Video: After these introductory activities, show the students the following video, to help further their knowledge of the vocabulary associated with the coordinate plane in order to get them ready for actually plotting points.
4. Lesson Activity: Introduction to ordered pairs and plotting points on the coordinate plane. Model how to plot points on the coordinate plane using the LCD projector or show the tail-end of this video.
5. Practice Activity: There are a variety of games that can be used to practice the vocabulary and concepts from today's lesson, which I can continue to add onto this site. However, one of my favorites is cartesian plane battleship. I played this game with my students this year. I had students pair off and use cartesian planes like a battleship board, with students choosing all of the ordered pairs for their ships and then guessing the locations of their opponent's ships. For some students who were comfortable with the Cartesian plane, this worked beautifully. However, for others, this was challenging to work on. One teacher seems to have found a solution by playing a teacher vs. class game. His directions and explanations can be found here.